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somebody wrote:
Mr. Tambourine Man is a metaphor for God, for those who have difficulty with literary interpretation.
somebody wrote:
Mr. TM had nothing to do with God! It's about letting yourself go with the moment. Do you mean to say that Dylan saw God in a Mardi Gras celebration? Because he has said that's what inspired him to write it. & Dylan was not Christian in 1965! he was an AGNOSTIC JEW!!! He said, that same year, "No I don't believe in anything. Nobody's shown me anything worth believing."
jh wrote:
Of all songs I'd rather not try to explain, Mr. Tambourine Man might be first. But I think the Mardi Gras/Carnival experience sheds light on it. Anyone out wandering the streets of New Orleans in the wee hours past midnight following Mardi Gras, is also wandering into the early hours of Ash Wednesday. By morning the streets are clean, the churches are full, & if you wander into the graveyards, rosary beads & flowers have appeared on many headstones.
Anyone who still wants to party past midnight looks strange indeed in the silence that befalls the city, & the contrast to the revelry of the preceding week can really take a stranger by surprise. The word "carnival" means: "farewell to flesh" & refers to abstention from meat during lent, but there is much more to say restless farewell to when the city that dreams goes to sleep.
By the end of the song, what began as maybe last echoes of carnival, sounds like the Mississippi has carried the traveller downstream & away. I think the Creator cannot be far from anyone's thoughts on Ash Wednesday in New Orleans, either in acts of faith, or as the recompense of hangover arrives like a grim reaper. Memories worthy of repentance or savor fill every mind. Most visiting travellers leave town in droves at dawn, if not before.
Dylan has said he was never an agnostic, & I believe it. Agnosticism concerning religion is not the same as that concerning the reality of God. A divine metaphor might be found in almost any of his songs, but the Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday time is one suspended between this world & the next, like a muddy bank on the bayou before the mighty river finishes the way to the sea. -jh
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